Legal Commentary

Obama Floats Plan to Delay Presentment to Judges in Terror Cases

By Jeralyn

Now we know how the Obama Administration wants to make its end-run around Miranda rights: by passing a law allowing police to delay bringing a suspect before a judge after arrest, so they can have more time to make them talk before a lawyer is appointed to represent them.

Shameful. Just a year ago, the Supreme Court decided Corley v. U.S. which said anything longer than 6 hours is unacceptable unless a judge isn't available.[More...]

Under the rule as revised by §3501©, a district court with a suppression claim must find whether the defendant confessed within six hours of arrest (unless a longer delay was “reasonable considering the means of transportation and the distance to be traveled to the nearest available [magistrate]”). If the confession came within that period, it is admissible, subject to the other Rules of Evidence, so long as it was “made voluntarily and … the weight to be given [it] is left to the jury.” Ibid. If the confession occurred before presentment and beyond six hours, however, the court must decide whether delaying that long was unreasonable or unnecessary under the McNabb-Mallory cases, and if it was, the confession is to be suppressed.

Under the Obama proposal:

If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week.

The goal of both measures would be to open a window of time after an arrest in which interrogators could question a terrorism suspect without an interruption that might cause the prisoner to stop talking. It is not clear how long of a delay the administration is considering seeking.

Taking rights taken from terror suspects today just makes it easier to take them from all of us tomorrow. It's ironic that this is one right even the Bush Administration didn't try and tinker with, and its our Democratic president showing so little respect for the rule of law.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 14, 2010 (boomark / email).